Of all terrible proposals coming up in this period, I'm still more-or-less ok with this system because the administrator is still in full control to set whatever date they want, and the field is entirely optional.

They call it "age verification" in the aricle, but there's no 3rd party "verification" whatsoever. It's just a field for the user birth date saved in the user metadata. This is IMHO acceptable because it doesn't force anybody to provide IDs or personal information to some random shady company.

I think calling it "age verification" is a bit confusing and will make people unhappy by default, but might be a smart move to make it compliant with the new laws coming out in this period (the user age was "verified" by the system administrator, after all).

[–] whelk@retrolemmy.com 19 points 2 days ago (1 children)

For me at least, it's less about the age field itself and more about the swift act of compliance with an absurd and overbearing demand

[–] lonesomeCat@lemmy.ml -2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

What is the alternative here?

[–] forestbeasts@pawb.social 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Not implementing it and going "well okay don't use it in California then", for one thing!

[–] lonesomeCat@lemmy.ml -4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I'm not an expert in law. But wouldn't the maintainers be fined if an underage used it in California? Given that they can obtain it without any sort of location spoofing

[–] cows_are_underrated@feddit.org 9 points 2 days ago

Not an expert in law either, but I Am pretty sure, that they would not be fined.

[–] muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works 8 points 2 days ago (1 children)

whereas I , out of pettiness, will switch an entire server to openRC to fuck over these assholes who only care about “line goes up”

[–] Vocalize8711@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

A man of culture, I see. Every system I admin runs SysVInit or OpenRC. I do not need a 'dictator' like systemd.

[–] pulsewidth@lemmy.world 22 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Yep. Its honestly mild as hell.

Essentially legislation that says:

app stores have to have age categories to silo children, teens, and adults.
OSes have to have a field to collect this data from users when they set up their login, so it can be sent to app stores via API.

Its just a standardized system that should have been done ages ago, but was not a priority for standards orgs, so none stepped up - so legislation appeared.

I strongly argue that it should only apply to commercial OSes and app stores though - as they're the ones that primarily cause issues these laws intent to address.

Linux and FOSS have been caught in the crossfire in a privacy and personal data battle they were not involved in.

[–] tyler@programming.dev 17 points 2 days ago

The legislation is entirely to allow Facebook to get away with harming minors, so I wouldn’t call it mild in any sense of the word.

[–] lost_faith@lemmy.ca 14 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The boiling pot goes up 1C, then another 1C

[–] pulsewidth@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago (2 children)

https://www.britannica.com/topic/slippery-slope-argument

[–] muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works 9 points 2 days ago (1 children)

nope. slippery slope is basically “bad thing can happen, so it will happen” without evidence to support that outcome. here, we have a trajectory. there’s a pattern. it has momentum at this point. it hasn’t changed corse. it’s followed a predictable and proven pattern. It’s done so because the the pressures exerted on this particular system guide the outcome in predictable ways.

that is entirely different than the slippery slope dismissal

[–] pulsewidth@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

No, entirely incorrect. "bad thing can happen, so it will happen" is essentially a mangling of Murphy's Law.

In a slippery slope argument, a course of action is rejected [eg: this minor law] because the slippery slope advocate believes it will lead to a chain reaction resulting in an undesirable end or ends [eg: loose claims of a pot getting hotter implying further details will be demanded next].

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope

[–] Pinguini@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago

More "thin end of the wedge".

[–] jimmy90@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

the lemmy doomers must scratch their suicidal itch

[–] Janx@piefed.social 7 points 2 days ago

Good points. It's like websites with an age-gate: technically they're trying to keep out users under a certain age (usually minors), but there's no verification.

But we all need to remember that "protecting the children" and clutching our pearls is still not a good reason to let world governments and giant corporations create laws, demand our papers, keep massive databases of our data, and tie our real-world identities to our online ones. It would be the end of anonymity online, it will get hacked, and they will use it for evil...

[–] MagnificentSteiner@lemmy.zip 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

They don't call the systemd change "age verification" in the article.

In fact, they specifically make the point that it isn't.

[–] other_cat@piefed.zip 8 points 2 days ago (1 children)

They do use it in the title though (the title on this post was auto-generated from the article, I didn't pick it out.)

I agree with OP, it's not really age verification in the sense we've been seeing in the news, but it IS a step in the direction of following the letter of the law without intrusiveness.

[–] MagnificentSteiner@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 days ago

The title says it is bringing the option for age verification, not that it is age verification.